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From New Westminster’s Steel & Oak Brewing in collaboration with Vancouver’s Superflux Beer Company comes their “Boomerang Double IPA”. The beer pours a seriously murky orange colour with a white head. The aroma consists of orange juice, tropical fruit, pienapple, sweetness, floral hops and dankness. The flavor is of big citrus rind, citrus, tropical fruit, resin, dankness and bitterness. The alcohol content comes in at 8%. This is a tasty brew but a little more bitterness than the average juice bomb.

From New Westminster’s Steel & Oak Brewing comes their “Towers and Trains” Early Grey IPA. The beer pours a golden colour with a white head. The aroma consists of light malts, earl grey tea and some floral hops. The flavour is of Earl Grey tea, grainy malts, herbal hops some citrus and a low bitterness. The alcohol content comes in at 6.2% with an IBU of 50. While not a huge tea fan this is a really enjoyable blend of Earl Grey tea and an IPA.

Commercial Description: Made with organic Earl Grey Tea from our friends just down the boardwalk at The Great Wall Tea Co. this Earl Grey IPA has a perfect balance of west coast hops, bergamot, and a gentle black tea bitterness.

From two breweries that never make IPA’s in Dageraad Brewing and Steel & Oak Brewing out of Burnaby and New Westminster respectively comes their “Suburbs 2 IPA”. The beer pours a deep murky orange with a white head. The aroma consists of orange, tropical fruit, citrus pith, sweetness and floral hops. The flavour is of orange, tropical fruit, citrus rind, pith, resin and a low bitterness with a Belgian yeast spin. The alcohol content comes in at 7.4%. For a breweries that do not make IPA’s this is one tasty Belgian inspired North East IPA.

It is October again and that means it was time for the 8th Annul BC Beer Awards. Once again the Beer Awards and festival were held at the Croatian Cultural Centre. This years festival landed on October 21st, 2017. The first 7 awards were held in a similar format with the festival happening at the same time as the awards with the announcements happening in the second half of the festival. This year the awards were held in a VIP hour that took place before the main doors opened.

I have been attending this event for many years now and it is one of the must attend events on the yearly calendar. I was lucky enough to be able to attend the awards portion of the event before the general public was let into the building. To me the most important part of the entire experience is the actual awards and that is one thing that I am not a big fan of with this years changes. luckily this was still an amazing event. The BC Beer Awards continue to grow every year with this having beer from 97 breweries and a total entries of 879. Last year for comparison was 83 breweries and 750 entries. The event started at 4pm for VIP’s and then opened up to the masses at 5pm. last call for the beer festival was at 9:45pm.

For the last few years Stephen Quinn of CBC Radio was the host of the awards but with a bad back he was unable to do the honors. This year Dan Burritt of CBC Radio took his place and did a wonderful job. I still hope one day 100% of the breweries will take part in this event as you never really know the best beer in the province if not everyone takes part. Lets get to the most important part, the winning beer!

CBC PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD

INNOVATOR OF THE YEAR – presented by Newlands Systems

This year had a few nice surprises with the winners. With the Best in Show being Flagship IPA from Steamworks Brewing the tides have turned a little bit towards creativity and not just following style guidelines for the BC Beer Awards. This year Boombox Brewing won CBC People’s Choice Award and Innovator of the Year went to Twin Sails Brewing. Both are very experimental breweries and leading the charge with great experimental brews. It was also amazing to see two rookie breweries win two huge awards. Brewery of the Year went to Mount Arrowsmith Brewing from the island and Rookie of the Year went to Backcountry Brewing out of Squamish.

The media got to enter at 3pm for a small media tour. Here are some photos from the media hour. The media tour was lead by Paul Pyne of DrinkSmarter.ca a Certified Cicerone and a member of the craft beer community.

Here are some of my photos of the event once it started. This year I took far less photos as I was busy recording audio for the Pacific Beer Chat episode. Here are the photos that I did take.

This year was once again an amazing year with even better beer both being served and winning awards. Here is to next years event!

From Steel & Oak Brewing in New Westminster in collaboration with Delta’s Four Winds Brewing across the river comes “The Fraser” a pale ale fermented with Saccharomyces Trois. The beer pours a cloudy orange colour with a white head. The aroma consists of light tropical fruit, yeasty, mild funk and some floral hops. The flavour is of mango, stone fruit, tropical fruit, citrus rind, yeast, mild funk with a dry not sweet finish. There is very little bitterness in this brew. The alcohol content comes in at 5.2% with an IBU of 24. This beer is not going to punch you in the face with flavour but it is an excellently executed collaboration brew from two great breweries.

Commercial Description: Fermented with Saccharomyces Trois yeast this Pale Ale was brewed with Amchoor (Green Mango spice) and hopped with Citra, Mosaic, and Azacca, as well as some fresh Cashmere for good measure. The Fraser is fruity, tropical, and funk. Not as funky as the people who brewed it but still pretty funky.